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Dragon Warrior III vs Contra vs Metroid vs The Legend of Zelda 2009
Results Round One Friday, April 10th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis The Legend of Zelda was expected to kill this match (which it obviously did), but it was also expected to kill Metroid so badly that Contra could sneak into second place. Zelda in general might not have gone Mario 1 and broke 70%, but this was a very impressive performance nonetheless. If I recall, Zelda 1 > Mario 1 was the consensus pick in future rounds. This poll really did nothing to prove otherwise. I forget the exact stats charmander posted in the stats topic, but the Mario 1 > Duck Hunt SFF compared with the Zelda > Metroid SFF here meant something like a 52-48 win for Zelda. This whole thing became more clear once Mario 1 got the chance at crushing Donkey Kong like a beer can, but more on that later. Metroid did exactly what it was supposed to do here. It got crushed by SFF and scored 23% on Zelda --- it got something like 21% on Mario 3 in 2004, if you recall --- so this is exactly what we all thought Metroid would get. So, easy pickings for Contra, right? Yeah, what the hell happened to Contra here? Either it just completely sucks these days, it too is subject to some heavy Nintendo SFF, or the 2004 stats are completely wrong. Probably a mix of all three, though I lean to the former. Contra was the first in a long, long line of casual shooters to disappoint based on expectations. Losing is one thing, but it didn't bother showing up. Another good theory to explore here is Nintendo LFF not mattering quite as much as initially expected, which pops up over and over again in future matches. It's rare to see a consensus pick bomb this badly, and Board 8 bracket people have a big ego about this sort of thing. Clearly something weird was going on <_< Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Every single Crew writeup went like this: "I'd take Metroid without too much trouble 1v1, but with Zelda in the way Contra has a clear edge here." Personally, I'm not entirely buying that line of thought. Let's take a look at some results, starting with the early days: * 2004 - Mario defeats Metroid with 78% * 2004 - LttP defeats Super Metroid with 74% * 2005 - Mario defeats Samus with 60% Alright, so these are pretty ugly, and certainly the three most well-known Samus/Metroid SFF'd results, which is why people assume that's still the case for this series/character. But actually things have been looking much better for it recently. Just take a look at * 2006 - Link defeats Samus with 78% (with Mario involved) * 2006 - Mario defeats Samus with 60% (with Link involved) ...okay, so the 2006 ToC was still pretty awful for Samus. BUT, in the 4ways battles of the past two years: * 2007 - Link defeats Samus with 70% * 2008 - Link defeats Samus with 70% (with Mario involved) * 2008 - Mario defeats Samus with 54% (with Link involved) Check it out- a major improvement against Mario, and she even held up quite well against Link all things considered. My theory is that the darker, more mature Metroid franchise continues to distance itself from Nintendo, which is allowing Samus and her games to hold their own more and more in recent years. This line of reasoning has lead me to... but I'm out of time, so here's my pick! * The Legend of Zelda - 57.06% * Contra - 16.08% * Metroid - 15.84% * Dragon Warrior III - 11.01% Next Day Review Bah, there goes my chance at the Perfect Bracket. And I was sooo close! *cough* As I briefly touched on though, losing these two Contra points doesn't bother me overly much since the remainder of my bracket relies on both Nintendo SFF not being quite so brutal as back in the day and Metroid in general being well-suited to the 4way environment, two ideas that you can make a better case for after seeing this result. So yeah, I'm not going to lie and say I didn't cry myself to sleep last night, but you have to understand it was a good cry. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches